Baby Boris on the lap of his wet nurse Maria; his mother, Rozalia, Pasternak is at the back. Moscow, 1890. Pasternak family digital archives, Hoover Institution Library and Archives.

Boris Pasternak (right) and his brother Aleksandr. Moscow, 1898. Pasternak family digital archives, Hoover Institution Library and Archives.

Boris Pasternak, his wife, Evgeniia Pasternak, and their son Evgenii. Moscow, 1924. Photographer Moisei Nappel’baum. Pasternak family digital archives, Hoover Institution Library and Archives.

Boris Pasternak (third from left) at the First Congress of the Union of Soviet Writers. Moscow, 1934. Pasternak family digital archives, Hoover Institution Library and Archives.

Boris Pasternak (far left, second row) among Soviet troops. 1943. Pasternak family digital archives, Hoover Institution Library and Archives.

Letter to Gleb Struve. 27 October 1958. Gleb Struve papers, Hoover Institution Library and Archives. Pasternak’s sister Josephine lived in Oxford, England. In this letter she voices fears for her brother of persecution by the Soviet authorities once they learn that he has won the Nobel Prize for Doctor Zhivago.

A Second Book of Russian Verse. C. M. Bowra, editor. London: Macmillan and Company, Ltd., 1948. Irwin T. Holtzman collection, Hoover Institution Library and Archives. Cecil Maurice Bowra, the foremost authority on classical and modern European poetry, chose one of Boris Pasternak’s poems for his A Book of Russia Verse (1943). Five years later, after Stefan Schimanski’s edition of Collective Prose Works (1945) had brought the poet to the attention of a large audience in the West, Bowra included in his second book of Pasternak’s poems, translated by Bowra. Only Pushkin has more poems in this edition than Pasternak. In 1946 Pasternak also sent Bowra his newest poems from Doctor Zhivago.

Boris Pasternak. Byt’ znamenitym nekrasivo (It is not seemly to be famous). 5 May 1956. Pasternak family papers.

Boris Pasternak's Il Dottor Živago. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1957. Irwin T. Holtzman collection, Hoover Institution Library and Archives. The first edition of Doctor Zhivago, appeared in Italian in November 1957.

Radio Liberty Broadcast. Gleb Struve Papers, Hoover Institution Library and Archives. Excerpt from programs broadcast from Munich to the Soviet Union after Boris Pasternak won the Nobel Prize.

Boris Pasternak in Peredelkino village, 1956. Photographer Aleksandr Less. Pasternak family digital archives, Hoover Institution Library and Archives.

Boris Pasternak’s house (now a museum) in Peredelkino village.